POPE, IN GERMANY, ASSAILS ABORTION AND MERCY KILLING

By JOHN TAGLIABUE, Special to the New York Times

Published: May 1, 1987

COLOGNE, West Germany, April 30—
Pope John Paul II, arriving for the start of a five-day tour of West Germany, called on the nation's bishops today to step up their efforts to halt the spread of abortions and mercy killings, comparing such actions to the killing of invalids and the terminally ill under the Nazi regime.

The Pope said the ''frighteningly high number of abortions and the increase in the illicit practice of so-called mercy killings'' meant that ''the mission to protect life has again assumed great significance and urgency for us bishops in today's society.''

The reference was evidently to the increase in legal abortions in many northern European countries and the mild attitude toward the voluntary death of the elderly and terminally ill in some countries, such as the Netherlands.

The Pope's tour of 11 West German cities is to focus on the experience of German Catholics under Nazism against the backdrop of a renewed discussion of the Holocaust and its significance for present-day Germans. Two to Be Beatified

The main feature of the Pope's trip, his second to West Germany, will be the beatification of two Germans.

At a mass in Cologne on Friday, the Pope will elevate Edith Stein to the status of blessed, the last step before sainthood. Miss Stein, a Jewish-born philosopher and writer, converted to Catholicism and entered a Carmelite convent. She was taken from the convent in 1942 and killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

On Sunday, in Munich, John Paul will beatify Rupert Mayer, a priest who was persecuted by the Nazis for his persistent criticism of their regime.

The decision to beatify Miss Stein has been criticized by members of her family and by leaders of Jewish groups who saw in it an effort to claim for Roman Catholicism a woman who had been killed because she was a Jew. Churches' Role Defended

Addressing members of the German Bishops' Conference this evening, the Pope defended the role of Christian churches under Nazism and stressed the importance they possessed in resisting its spread.

The role of the Catholic clergy in the 12-year rule of Hitler has been extremely controversial in Germany since the publication in the 1960's of ''The Vicar,'' a drama by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth criticizing the role of the church under Pope Pius XII for having failed to act to save European Jewry.

Pope John Paul was welcomed under rainy, slate-gray skies at Cologne Airport by Joseph Cardinal Hoffner, the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, and by President Richard von Weizsacker and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

On Friday, in Munster, in northern Germany, the Pope will honor the memory of Clemens August Cardinal Graf von Galen, the aristocratic Archbishop of that city, who was virtually the sole Catholic prelate to assail Nazi atrocities from the pulpit.

Though West Germany is often viewed as a predominantly Protestant country, Catholics make up roughly half the nation's population of some 60 million people. But the numbers do not fully reflect the wealth or influence of the German church within Catholicism. A system of tithes collected by the civil government for church authorities has guaranteed considerable wealth even at a time when national churches elsewhere are suffering financially.

photo of Pope John Paul II with President Richard von Weizsacker of W. Germany (Agence France-Presse)